(Don’t spend over $500 starting out, you don’t need THAT much computer to start an online business)

SHANE: When we first started out, we used very cheap computers. I had an Acer, I don’t even know what the number was, 7200 maybe, was that what it was? I have no idea. It was $270 and I got it at Wal-Mart. That’s the first computer that we started our online business on, where I started our first websites on. It was fine. All you really need, 90% of your work is going to be done through a browser. We use the Chrome browser from Google. We love the Chrome browser. There are a lot of extensions that give it added functionality and it just works.

It’s a lot better than using Internet Explorer or any of the other browsers out there. You really just need something that can do that. Are you going to get into some things later? Yeah, you’re going to do some editing maybe with some audio or some video, but most of your normal inexpensive computers that you can get from a department store will do that. My Acer was fine. It worked great at first and it really did everything that we needed to do. What did you have when we first started out?

JOCELYN: I think we’ve had a lot of different kinds of computers. The computer that I was using most recently before we switched was HP and I actually got it from a Black Friday sale. That’s a great time to shop for computers. There are two really good times that I found to shop for computers. One is during back to school time, like in July, and the other one is at Black Friday.

You can get some really great deals on computers. I think I got mine from www.walmart.com but you can also check out www.amazon.com. Look for great deals. RAM is really important especially if you’re going to be doing a lot of video or audio, or if you’re not really sure what you’re going to do in the future, it’s always a good idea to have as much RAM as possible. That’s one thing that you can look for.

You can also look for good deals on refurbished machines. My last HP was a refurbed machine and I think I paid maybe a little over $500 for it, but it did have 8 GB of RAM, which at that time was pretty good. That’s mostly what I look for when I’m looking for a computer.

SHANE: Yeah and you really don’t need a high-powered machine especially if you’re just starting out. Maybe you’re just starting a blog or you’re just using WordPress. Even if you’re just creating digital products, I mean, really, all you need to be able to do is get on that Chrome browser, use the Google Docs software, and you can make e-books and Google Slides or their Google Docs. You can just make everything there and just save it as a PDF. That really doesn’t take a lot of processing power.

Even doing like a podcast, it would take a little longer maybe to process everything when you convert the file to MP3 or whatever but you can do most of the things that you need to do online with any basic computer. I would highly recommend getting at least probably 6 GB of RAM at first, maybe, just to start out, at least that much.

JOCELYN: Yeah, definitely the more RAM you can get, the better.

SHANE: Yeah, that’s where your power is coming from.

JOCELYN: I would even say you could do a Chrome Book and you video on your phone starting out if you needed to do that. That would definitely be an option if you’re just thinking there’s no way that I can do this.

SHANE: We actually have a Chrome Book as well. We just upgraded it to pretty high powered machines because we’re starting to do a lot more video processing and that is going to require a little more horsepower down the road. We actually have a ChromeBook that was I think it was under $200 and it can get in Chrome. It has all the document software.

We run our business from the ChromeBook when we’re out and about around town because we don’t want to drag our laptops around with us. We can get on there. We can blog post. There are extensions and things where you can record audio, you can record video. You can even run a webinar from your Chrome Book. We have done that before. I’ve done consulting calls from my Chrome Book while I was on the road where we had video and everything like that. So even something as simple as a Chrome Book, just a blog and get started would be fine.

When you’re looking at all these internet marketing gurus and you see all these people online, don’t get caught up in the, “Ooh, they have a Mac and that thing costs $3,000. If I don’t have a Mac, I just can’t run an internet business.” That is totally not true. Take whatever computer you’ve got now and start with that. As you make some money, as you do better in your online business, upgrade, but don’t go out just to get the fanciest, prettiest tool because people on the internet that look like experts are doing that. You can run an internet business with a nice simple computer from Wal-Mart, from www.amazon.com, or just something that you get online refurbished for $200 or $300.

I hope that answers your question. Thanks for tuning again. If you want your question answered on the Flipped Lifestyle Q&A Session Mini-Podcast, all you have to do is show up on Sundays at 8 o’clock Eastern time and we will have a post open on our Facebook page every week where we will be taking questions for the podcast. That is the only place that we’re going to take questions from.

So if you email a question, we’ll try to get back to you but if we can’t, we get so many emails now. We’re getting probably around 100 a day, messages from all of our social media and our emails, we’re going to try to get all of these questions in that Facebook discussion every week. You can find that at www.Facebook.com/flippedlifestyle and that will be open at 8 o’clock for any questions that you want to do and it will be open all evening. So even if you’re on the West coast or you’re in another time zone, you’re welcome to leave a question on our Facebook page.

Thanks for tuning in and we will see you next time on the Flipped Lifestyle podcast.

JOCELYN: Bye.

SHANE: One more thing guys, if you would like immediate one-on-one help from Jocelyn and myself, all you have to do is go to www.flippedlifestyle.com/talktous, that’s all one word. You can check out our consulting services. We do not do a lot of consulting but we do block out a few hours a week where we can get on the phone, get on Skype, get on a Google Hangout, and talk to you about your online business where you can work personally with me and Jocelyn to help you go to the next level.

If you need any help, if you need one on one attention and you just can’t wait until maybe we select you for a Flipped Podcast, all you have to do is go to:

This is the exact computer we are using now, the MacBook Pro

You can connect with S&J on social media too!

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